Finkelstein, when he published this book [The Holocaust Industry], was alone. It takes an enormous amount of academic courage to speak the truth when no one else is out there to support him. And so, I think that given this acuity of vision and analytical power, I would say that his place in the whole history of writing history is assured, and that those who in the end are proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost.
— Raul Hilberg, foremost WW2 Holocaust scholar
It’s amazing that he [Finkelstein] hasn’t had full professorship a long time ago.
— Noam Chomsky, “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” according to the New York Times Book Review
The courageous, free-speaking DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure even though his teaching and scholarship are indisputably of high standard. The risible pretext for dismissal is a lack of collegiality, which is contradicted by the DePaul U administration’s own acknowledgement of his popularity among students. Conclusively, DePaul U has been abjectly bent by certain interests that any half-witted observer could quickly deduce. As acclaimed intellectual Noam Chomsky made clear in an interview:
What’s behind it? It’s very simple and straightforward. Norman Finkelstein wrote a book, which is in fact the best compendium that now exists of human rights violations in Israel and the blocking of diplomacy by Israel and the United States, which I mentioned — very careful scholarly book, as all of his work is, impeccable — also about the uses of anti-Semitism to try to silence a critical discussion.
And the framework of his book was a critique of a book of apologetics for atrocities and violence by Alan Dershowitz. That was the framework. So he went through Dershowitz’s shark claims, showed in great detail that they are completely false and outrageous, that he’s lying about the facts, that he’s an apologist for violence, that he’s a passionate opponent of civil liberties — which he is — and he documented it in detail.
Dershowitz is intelligent enough to know that he can’t respond, so he does what any tenth-rate lawyer does when you have a rotten case: you try to change the subject, maybe by vilifying opposing counsel. That changes the subject. Now we talk about whether, you know, opposing counsel did or did not commit this iniquity. And the tactic is a very good one, because you win, even if you lose. Suppose your charges against are all refuted. You’ve still won. You’ve changed the subject. The subject is no longer the real topic: the crucial facts about Israel, Dershowitz’s vulgar apologetics for them, which sort of are reminiscent of the worst days of Stalinism. We’ve forgotten all of that. We’re now talking about whether Finkelstein did this, that and the other thing. And even if the charges are false, the topic’s been changed. That’s the basis of it.
Amy Goodman, “Noam Chomsky Accuses Alan Dershowitz of Launching a ‘Jihad’ to Block Norman Finkelstein From Getting Tenure at Depaul University,” Democracy Now! 17 April 2007.
Further revelations of the bathos at DePaul U have become known to me. I had intended to further deconstruct the nonsense underlying the tenure denial, but, really, what’s the point? Finkelstein is being railroaded out.
Does that mean academic freedom is at the whim of certain power centers? Probably. Education in the capitalist system will be predisposed to the caprice of capitalists.
Is there nothing that can be done to achieve academic freedom? Yes, there are options. But the struggle will not be easy, and there will probably be costs involved.
Professors and students could stage a strike/walkout until the matter of academic freedom is satisfactorily settled, but this would achieve only a partial or Pyrrhic victory in the end because the present academic system would, for the most part, be preserved. Also, power would continue to reside in the hands of a few individuals, maintaining the skewed hierarchical structure.
Whether enough professors or students would be willing to partake in a strike/walkout is questionable. Only approximately one-third of the faculty have signed a petition (that has been available for endorsement since 27 June) calling for an investigation into the suspicious tenure denials of DePaul U professors this year. So what about the other two-thirds of faculty? If they are aware of the petition and its circumstances, then either they agree with the administration’s decision that unpleasant personalities — such as an allegedly uncollegial Finkelstein — should be denied tenure, they do not care, or they are afraid.
It is hoped that, at the very least, academics care about academic freedom. Quite likely, however, there are those people who will agree, without much fuss, to conduct their research and teach within circumscribed bounds of acceptability to power centers and satisfy themselves with a paycheck and other perks of academia. These academics delineate a point where they relinquish pretense to being intellectuals. This essay is not directed at them.
For the professors who are concerned about academic freedom and speaking the truth, working within capitalist academia is a fearsome prospect, tenured or not.
The obvious solution is to abandon a system that is anathema to academic freedom and truth speaking and start one’s own system.
Do intellectuals really believe in a system predicated upon — albeit not solely — producing workers with skills necessary for the capitalist system? Do intellectuals support the titular and professional hierarchy within academia? Do professors love learning for the sake of learning and helping others gain knowledge and develop their critical thinking skills?
Do professors want to put up with the witch hunts of David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, and his Campus Watch? Do professors regard their colleagues as equals? Do professors realize that their knowledge and furtherance of the frontiers of knowledge is made possible because of the intellectual work of contemporaries and many others who came before them?
Remove the professors and the students from DePaul U and what is left is a campus with a few buildings and facilities. Is it still a university? Maybe in name, but it can no longer function as a university.
Can the students and professors constitute a university? Of course. A classroom is wherever the professors and students get together to discourse. It can be outside, in a library, in a cafeteria, or in a basement.
If intellectual professors want academic freedom, they just have to take it. If students want unhindered exposure to knowledge, then they just have to go to the sources of this knowledge.
The opportunities for academic enhancement extend beyond the matter of academic freedom. For instance, do professors want to work in an elitist institute, or do they believe that a university education should be open to all? Should a university environment be a competitive environment? Should tests and grading be scraped in favor of each person determining their own improvement? Should the distinctions between professors — and students — melt away to provide an environment devoid of elitism and snobbery? These are matters that professors and students can decide among themselves.
The Anarchist Free University Model
Establishing an independent university wholly supportive of academic freedom is easier said than done, but it is already being done on some level at the Anarchist Free University in Toronto. AFU has been a truly radical experiment in university education.
AFU grew out of a series of radical info-shops and the Anarchist Free School that functioned in Toronto in the late 1990s. In remaining true to the guiding ideas of anarchism, the anarchist label was maintained despite any negative connotations it may have for some people. It was established early that the AFU was to be a non-hierarchical organization built on consensus-decision-making. Begun in September 2003, this unique university is non-hierarchic and is run by a volunteer collective; it is run without admission or tuition fees and is open to everyone. While free-of-charge, “free university” refers to “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
Traditional teacher-student roles are non-existent at AFU. Teachers are resources of knowledge rather than authoritarian figures. In fact, even the terminology is different. AFU member Christopher Smith said, “[W]ithin the AFU, we’ve consciously tried to avoid using the term ‘teacher’ or ‘prof,’ instead encouraging folks to think about leading a course as an act of ‘facilitation.’”
In solidarity with non-hierarchical principles, Smith said, “A PhD holds very little weight in terms of facilitators.” Tenured professors have facilitated at AFU, but Smith adds that AFU has also had 18-year-old high-school dropouts and adolescents from alternative (high) schools acting as facilitators.
At AFU, education is not coercive. Learning is for its own sake. The courses have ranged from Japanese cinema, economics, climate change, the politics of addiction to yoga, first aid, queer history, Latin American politics, lucid dreaming, indigenous resistance movements, chaos theory, and so on.
The university is without campus. The various classes, in arts and sciences, take place in different community centers and homes throughout Toronto.
Academic Self-Empowerment
I could have bashed my head against the wall and written another expose on the DePaul U administration’s chicanery underlying the tenure denial to Finkelstein, but every rational thinking person knows he was targeted. There is no use exposing this scandal more. The question remaining was what to do about academic freedom besides weighing in more futile words.
There is a choice: professors can serve in capitalistic university institutions and keep a sufficiently low profile on topics considered taboo by the power centers, or those professors who advocate progressivist principles can act on them and become a part of an academic revolution.
A university that could count Norman Finkelstein, and perhaps a Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, and numerous other progressives, on its faculty should have no problem attracting students. AFU stands as a leading and admirable example of what is possible on a small scale. By keeping away from the corporate university structure — for example, renting halls and using one’s own press to keep book costs low — the faculty can create a university that is, perhaps, within the financial reach of more people in society. Facilitators/professors could also consider invoking a sliding-scale tuition rate based upon ability to pay.
There is no need for faculty and students to be disempowered in academia. Using pareconist type principles,
When academic freedom is lacking, then the integrity of a university education is threatened. This is just a bare bones proposal to support academic freedom. It seems a project worth contemplating deeper and, perhaps, struggling for.